Saturday, November 7, 2009

Dragon Age: Thoughts on Orzammar

Uggh... to sum it up in one word.

I'm going to try and keep this as spoiler free as possible, so be forewarned.

The deep roads just plain suck. Having to go through so many sections of them is even worse. They are long, the fights are boring, and it just drags on and on and on. It seems like the developers thought that they needed to add some more time to the game so decided hey, let's make them trudge underground and fight deep stalkers, spiders, and darkspawn till they claw their eyes out. Then let's make them due it for multiple quests (luckily the first one was short, the one regarding the Paragon, not so much).

I am not getting interested in the political situation of the dwarves at all. I am roleplaying an impatient Grey Warden who solely wants troops for battle, not to be a little errand boy. Since when do I have to solve everyone's problems.

Definite Spoilers Ahead (Regarding Paragon quest)

As I mentioned earlier, the paragon quest never seems to end. Thankfully I get a drunk dwarf to join me for the ride as his advances on Wynne are just plain hilarious. But having to trek through three or four sections of the Deep Roads to find this chick just gets on my nerves. Long boring passages with not much in the way of sightseeing.

It got a little interesting when I ran across one of Branka's captains which chronicled Branka going psycho. This interest soon wore off in the fight against the Brood Mother. 8 retries to get, which isn't my worst, but when the fight goes a couple minutes before you die, it gets old fast. The key to fight is not paying attention to the Brood Mother except when she is the only one around. Take out the tentacles and darkspawn quick, then get back to wailing on her.

Of course, after the Brood Mother, I get stuck in another proving grounds area. As if the one I did to get the Urn of the Sacred Ashes wasn't enough. I stopped for the night after defeating the third portion where you had to kill the spirit and hit an anvil to defeat the boss in the middle. That one required quite a bit of micromanaging as my team members liked to just stand in the middle trying to attack something they can't hit.

Update - Just finished the area and it sucks even more. I decided to side with Cairdin and Branka made me pay. I was low on health and mana potion coming in so it made it that much worse. Took about 7 attempts in which I finally succeeded by taking out her helper golems first than focus firing. When she duplicates herself for the first time, I wiped ridiculously fast. After numerous attempts, I finally survived the onslaught and destroyed the Forge of the Void.